Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants • Hacker News Board

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#481

Post by peterfirefly » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 6:38 PM UTC

triceratops wrote: post #72

nandomrumber wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The West built the existing rector fleet cheap and fast in the past, and those reactors have proven to be safe and reliable and maintainable. It’s a proven technology with decades decades in service. We actually don’t know m any of the long term risks and unintended consequences of providing wind / solar + batteries at scale. What rational is there to scrap the one and mandate the other?

> What rational is there to scrap the one and mandate the other? No one said "scrap", you're making up a lie and arguing against it. They're saying keep one and build more of the other.

Germany did indeed make that choice.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#482

Post by Moldoteck » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 6:39 PM UTC

crote wrote: post #180

derektank wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renewables are cheap. Renewables plus battery storage still are not and nuclear is a reasonable alternative for base load power.

Nuclear isn't an economically viable option for base load. Nuclear is the most expensive form of power generation. If there is excess supply, forcefully turning off renewables to buy electricity from nuclear would make the electricity needlessly expensive and kill the free market. In other words: it can only be a base load if we massively subsidize it and throw away free renewable electricity. On the other hand, nucl…

renewables are already curtailed and market is still not killed. Nuclear is very expensive if you build it in 20y.

H2 per lazard even at 25%mix is as bas as vogtle in terms of lcoe. And thats with cheap us gas for the rest 75%

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#483

Post by Moldoteck » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 6:40 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #162

graemep wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renewables (especially wind) are mostly more variable. I have lived in a country that was reliant on hydroelectricity and the consequences of a drought were severe (literally days of power cuts, water cuts because of the lack of power...). Part of the solution was to build coal and oil power. Surely nuclear is better than coal?

One small problem, nuclear is also dependent on water: https://www.theenergymix.com/low-water-high-water-temps-forc...

France was net exporting 14GW at that time. There's no reason for EDF to build cooling towers there - where would you sell the power?

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#484

Post by Moldoteck » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 6:41 PM UTC

Pay08 wrote: post #29

graemep wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renewables (especially wind) are mostly more variable. I have lived in a country that was reliant on hydroelectricity and the consequences of a drought were severe (literally days of power cuts, water cuts because of the lack of power...). Part of the solution was to build coal and oil power. Surely nuclear is better than coal?

I'm no expert but I believe the problem there is that you can only vary the power output of a nuclear reactor by very little. Essentially, it's either on or off, and is therefore not able to provide the flexibility needed for power outages, since only some of the generators might be offline, not necessarily all of them. Whereas you can vary the output of a coal or gas plant by a lot, simply via using different amount…

look at open RTE data. You can modulate nuclear a lot.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#485

Post by peterfirefly » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 6:41 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #162

graemep wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renewables (especially wind) are mostly more variable. I have lived in a country that was reliant on hydroelectricity and the consequences of a drought were severe (literally days of power cuts, water cuts because of the lack of power...). Part of the solution was to build coal and oil power. Surely nuclear is better than coal?

One small problem, nuclear is also dependent on water: https://www.theenergymix.com/low-water-high-water-temps-forc...

Dry cooling towers exist.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#486

Post by booi » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 6:41 PM UTC

throwaway2037 wrote: post #409

Alexsky2 wrote: post #253

A bit unrelated to the Belgium story but I recently visited Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant near San Luis Obispo, CA and learned a ton about the technical details, safety systems, and policy decisions that go into operating a nuclear power plant. When operating at full capacity, it provides up to 10% of California power! While there is certainly always more such facilities can do for safety and efficiency, my impre…

I did some research about that nuclear power plant. In 1985 dollars, the total construction cost was 5.6B USD. That is an astonishing amount of money. That is at least 16B USD in 2026 money. If you also include decomissioning costs of about 4-5B USD... how the fuck does nuclear power make any economic sense? PV solar plus batteries: ALL THE WAY. To be clear, I am not anti-nuclear power by any means. I think it is a t…

$5.6B actually sounds like a good deal. It outputs 2GW+ of power. While solar is definitely cheaper for 2GW of power, you still need batteries for when the sun is down. So you probably need approximately 30GWh of batteries to just replace this one power plant. The batteries alone would cost nearly $7B of grid-scale batteries that must be replaced every 20 years.

Ignoring the fact that the nuclear plant already exists, this still seems like the right way to go mostly because it's impossible to build this nuclear power plant for $16B in the US anymore (or so it seems).

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#487

Post by Moldoteck » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 6:42 PM UTC

Pay08 wrote: post #37

tokai wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No not at all. You can vary reactor output, its generally as simple as pulling rods in or out. But they cannot just turn on and off. That takes a ton of time and effort.

Huh, I don't know where I read that their output can only be at 100% then.

no, you can do wild variations as long as it's not full shutdown

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#488

Post by Moldoteck » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 6:43 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #60

andrepd wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not keen on new nuclear (time and cost as much as anything else), but it's a terrible idea to phase out operating nuclear plants which are still safe and within their planned lifetime. This is pretty much the summary of the whole discussion. Building new nuclear is a debate, seeing as renewables are dirt cheap it might or might not make sense to build new nuclear reactors that take a fuckton of money and many y…

Shutting down at the intended end of life is a third decision point. New renewables are approaching the marginal running cost of nuclear that is still within their intended life span. It would need to be shown that an expensive refurb is better than running it down efficiently while building out new renewables as far as bang for buck in getting off imported gas.

in belgium case the choice is rather nuclear or new gas plants from engie. Why do you think engie wants them shut?

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#489

Post by Ray20 » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 6:43 PM UTC

Moldoteck wrote: post #465

throwaway2037 wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did some research about that nuclear power plant. In 1985 dollars, the total construction cost was 5.6B USD. That is an astonishing amount of money. That is at least 16B USD in 2026 money. If you also include decomissioning costs of about 4-5B USD... how the fuck does nuclear power make any economic sense? PV solar plus batteries: ALL THE WAY. To be clear, I am not anti-nuclear power by any means. I think it is a t…

decomissioning is embedded in opex cost and fairly cheap www.kkg.ch/de/uns/geschaefts-nachhaltigkeitsberichte.html The complexity now is doing it without delays. China shows that it can be built very cheap and fast with good supply chain

> China shows that it can be built very cheap and fast with good supply chain

I mean, thank you, the USSR already showed this, no more is needed.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#490

Post by peterfirefly » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 6:44 PM UTC

Pay08 wrote: post #37

tokai wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No not at all. You can vary reactor output, its generally as simple as pulling rods in or out. But they cannot just turn on and off. That takes a ton of time and effort.

Huh, I don't know where I read that their output can only be at 100% then.

Some reactor types are better at going up and down in power fast than others. It is definitely a solved problem, though, and has been for decades.

I remember, decades ago, that anti-nuclear activists (some of them were even university professors who ought to know better) argued that it was impossible while France had already been doing exactly that for decades (at the time).